A week ago I was at one of the somewhat irregular meetings of our relatively newlyformed writers’ group (which has yet to gain an official name but is sort of soldiering on under the name of ‘the Tea Society’). Among the many discussions and random witterings, including some interesting ideas regarding World Book Night which I will share with you later, we got onto a discussion about location photographs. Later that week, during the launch of Oblivion Storm, R.A Smith opened a thread which was a ‘virtual tour of London’ using Google Earth, Streetview and Panaramio to showcase locations from the book.

The reconstructed gatehouse of Arbeia Roman fort in South Shields

So this got me to thinking. When writing Transitions I used a few locations which were familiar to me and as part of the research for the book I took a number of photos to get a better feel for the locations. I was also, at the time, thinking about the cover of the book and what a cover artist may want with regards to inspiration if not actual images they could use to mock up a decent composition.

One of the many caves aong Marsden beach

I had largely considered that to be that. The photos I had taken were between me and my cover artist and have since been left on my Flickr account not doing much. However, during the aforementioned discussion of my writers’s group, Ninfa Hayes mentioned that readers often like to see such things. Thinking about it, I agreed with her so I decided to share some of these location shots with you. There are three main locations discussed in Transitions – Arbeia Roman Fort and the surrounding area, the Roman City of Aqua Sulis ( which became modern day Bath) and the University of Birmingham and surrounding area.

So, this first post is all about Arbeia. This was a fort built by the Romans in 120 AD to

A shot of Marden beach showing the lift that led down into the pub (which was closed at the time).

act as a resupply depot for Hadrian’s wall. Since the fort was in my hometown it seemed an obvious place to base Gaius Lucius, my Roman character. Of course, there were a number of slight historical issues I had to contend with. Gaius Lucius, for example, is not Arabic like many of the soldiers at Arbeia would have been. Though to be fair, I don’t actually mention his origin so he could well be Arabic. However, throughout the writing of the story I did imagine him as being from Gaul. Another issue is the fact that the fort was founded in 120 AD and I had originally considered the story being set much earlier, perhaps 10 – 30 year after the death of Jesus. Instead, the timing of the fort meant I had to shift my timings to post 120 AD and opted for 123 AD as being not too long after this point. I also flanged over the fact that it is likely the fort in this period was not going to be as well established as is implied in the story. I hope you consider these to be minor issues and also points which you were likely not to have noticed until I pointed them out to you just now… 🙂

A close up of one of the deeper caves

Of course, Gaius is never seen at the fort. Instead, he is first seen travelling along a beach to find a cave in which a mad old man lives. That beach, in case anyone is interested, was what is now known as Marsden beach. I am not aware of there ever having been mad old wisemen living in caves on Marsden beach but I accept there is a chance there could have been. There have always been rumours of smugglers there in the past , using the caves to hide goods and there is a pub, the Marsden Grotto, which popular rumour has was a place where these smugglers would hang out. I am currently drawing on this in another story which I am in the middle of writing – a sequel to Gods of the Sea. The pub is also said to be haunted (one of the ghosts being that of a notorious smuggler, as it happens) and has been the subject of one of those over the top ‘Britains most haunted’ style shows. With all of these features, it struck me as a wonderful inspiration for a location where a Roman could meet a mad old Briton for a bit of supernatural advice.

So, there you have it. How Arbeia Roman Fort and Marsden beach inspired the first part of Gaius Lucius’s story in Transitions. In a later entry I will talk about the city of Bath and the University of Birmingham and how they are linked to the story.

This year, in order to stay ahead of the curve and reveal my contrary nature, I opted to go ahead and do it. Because not doing it once and claiming you are doing so because it is cool not to is fine but there is no sense in repeating the pose for a second year. No sense in doing what people expect, always keep the audience guessing. 🙂

Actually, the main reason I opted to do it was to give myself a kick up the backside. Earlier in the year I had promised a publisher a complete anthology of short stories (well, one novella and some shorts) and had promised him delivery by a certain time. In the meantime, the deadline has whooshed past and I was still sat there with barely anything written and all of that painfully extracted over the course of several months. So, when November loomed I looked at my barely begun novella and decided that this would be my Nano project.

Of course, I still had the same problems as last year, which were my main reasons for not doing Nano. Work life balances getting all out of synch and all that. This time I even had a regular job to occupy me. I knew that 50K was unlikely to be a target I could aim for and still stay sane, married, healthy and employed. Instead, I opted for a lesser target. As things stood on my WIP I had just under 10K written already and I had predicted it to be about 30K when complete (various additional stories were planned to take the whole project to more than 50K, some of which had already been written and just needed tweaking). I therefore set myself two targets:

1) Write at least 20K words in order to get the total up to more than 30K

2) Complete the novella

By the end of NaNo I had written 20777 words which definitely achieved the first target and had put the novella to just under 30K words (close enough to be not worthwhile worrying about). However, I had not finished the novella…. the reason being that I realised that it is going to be a much longer story than I originally thought. I am almost at the end but there are at least another few thousand words to go and I am pondering additional scenes which may take it even higher than that.

So, I am counting my first NaNo experience as a win. I acheived one of my goals and only did not achieve the other because of changes in the goalposts. Not only that, but the process has reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the project which had been mired in the doldrums for far too long. In the course of writing I created a new character who I enjoy writing (he was intended to be an incidental local colour character, present for maybe a scene or two, but I ended up taking him further than that) and thought of some new plot ideas which I hope work. Of course, I have also produced something that is grammatically messy, likely filled with examples of bad writing and worse plot cliches but at least I have produced something and there is nothing that cannot be fixed in the edit.

Would I do it again in the future? Maybe. I suppose it would depend on the circumstances – am I working full time? Do I have a project that is languishing? I do think it was a good motivation tool and so worth doing on that basis alone. Not sure I would ever get to the point where I would ‘win’ NaNo but I am confident that it will be useful nontheless.

I was recently informed of a positive review of Transitions. Actually, I was informed of this review a few weeks ago, but am only just getting round to posting about it now. With an event to help organise (or at least provide moral support for), real world work to plan and my insane idea to do Nano this year (that’s a whole different post…) I was actually finding it hard to do much serious blogging last month. There was also the fact that the link I was sent to the review does not actually seem to go to a page that includes my review. I was not sure if this meant my review was yet to be published, was lost deep in an archive or was only visible during the third quarter of the full moon when the month has an F in it and is more than 28 days… So, I didn’t want to post anything about it until I got some form of confirmation.

But now November is over, the event was this weekend gone and Nano is also a thing of the past. I do still have real world work to do but my time is a little freer than it was. Ok, I still cannot find the actual review (if anyone can help, I’d appreciate it) but what the hell…

So, the lovely people over at Penumbra Press sometimes review books by other publishers and they decided to pick up mine (the full review is allegedly in their reviews section but I cannot find it). The fragment of the full review that was sent to me is fairly promising, however. It included:

“Throughout this story D. A. Lascelles artfully uses his skills with words to magically paint images in the reader’s head. Not only do places come into clear focus, but the seasons and atmosphere of the locations are also imbued with a descriptive clarity and realistic essence.

Written for paranormal romance fans of all ages, Transitions successfully marries modern day and roman Britain by interspersing the memories and history of roman officer Lucius Gaius with the ordinarily mundane lives of two university students…Transitions is a fair read that will keep you occupied, even if only for a day trip away.”

And the score was apparently ‘3 books’. I am assuming and hoping that this is out of 5 and not, for example, 500 🙂

This is, in fact, the first review I have ever had. For anything. By anyone who was not a friend or family member, anyway. So far both Transitions and Pirates and Swashbucklers have avoided reviews in places like Goodreads and Amazon though Pirates seems to have been marked as ‘to read’ by a lot of people. So, as a first go at the review wheel I am happy with this result. There will likely be bad ones out there too, not that I have found any yet, so it is good to start on a positive note. Plus, my ego is telling me that I should get that first paragraph printed on a T-shirt because I really like it. A lot.

Gods of the Deep is the current working title, which is a step up from ‘Un-named sequel’ which was its previous working title. It was chosen to fit in with the previous published story which was Gods of the Sea.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

The idea for Gods of the Sea came from a LRP game I used to play (now long defunct). I decided I wanted to tell the origin story of how two of the characters met so one Christmas I got out my laptop and tapped out a few thousand words and sent it to a publisher who I knew were looking for ‘pirate stories’. It got picked up and published in the Pirates and Swashbucklers anthology. No one was more surprised at this than me.

Then, earlier this year, the publisher contacted me and as a result of that discussion the concept of ‘Gods of the Deep’ was produced – an anthology of short stories set in the same world as Gods of the Sea, including both a reprint of Gods of the Sea and some form of sequel. Again, I was surprised.

What genre does your book fall under? It’s mainly fantasy with some pulp elements. And Pirates, Because you’ve got to have pirates…

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie?

Many years before I’d even considered writing Gods of the Sea, one of the organisers of the LRP game told me that they believed Professor Everyn Crowe should be played by Christopher Ecclestone. Not sure I quite agree with that assessment but I am hard pressed to find an appropriate alternative. Someone like David Tennant would be good too but I am not sure if that is not just me showing my Doctor Who geekery. Of course there is also the fact that any casting choice may have to take into account Everyn’s foreign nature as he is supposed to have a ‘Mediterranean’ look but that has never stopped Hollywood in the past before.

Captain Rachel Drake obviously has to be played by a strong, British woman. Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary Crawley) is a possibility but there are a few other actors who would be excellent in that role. I think there may, however, be a general call for ‘anyone other than Keira Knightly’ which I agree with…

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I am still writing it so no idea. Am hoping to get it finished soon, though. It is my Nano project and completion of it is the target I have set myself for this month. However, Nano style writing is different to how I usually do things. The concept of splurging words onto the page in order to acheive a word count target and worrying about the editing later is alien to me. I prefer a slower method with less faff afterwards. However, slower methods do not let you reach deadlines so easily.

Gods of the Sea was written in a number of days, however. And not whole days, either. A few hours each day in between doing other things. Possibly the fastest I have ever written anything intended for publication that actually got published.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

One of my crit partners did say that Gods of the Sea read a little like a Michael Moorcock story and I have been strongly influenced in the past by his work, specifically the Elric novels. So I suppose you could say that the closest comparison to Gods of the Deep would be a Michael Moorcock story in style if not in the features of the story. The fact that Gods of the Sea and Gods of the Deep are shorter fiction (Gods of the Sea is a short, Gods of the Deep a novella) which have a direct continuity with each other also fits the pattern of early Moorcock, where one novel was comprised of several shorter stories that directly followed on from each other.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

The main inspiration for the story came from the LRP game, Adventures in the Arcroc, which I played many many years ago. The Arcroc was the name of a fantasy world with a technology level roughly somewhere between 1600’s and 1800’s. It’s not particularly precise in its historical comparison because there are elements from all over history thrown in there, but the history is also an inspiration as are stories of swashbucklers and pirates and adventures at sea – anything from Sinbad to Hornblower and Pirates of the Carribean.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? How about a teaser?

There are demons… and a scene I love where Everyn runs to Rachel’s rescue, thinking he is the only one who can save her from assasination, only to find when he gets there that she has quite happily rescued herself and is now being rather suave about it in an ‘injury? What injury? Oh this? Just a scratch…’ sort of way.

“But…” he stammered. “The demon…” He waved the horse statue in the air in front of his face. “I’m here to… banish it.”

“Banish it?” She smiled as she checked the length of the blade for nicks and scratches. “No need, everything is under control.”

“But, the only way you could have banished that demon was to have empowered a suitable vessel with the correct incantations and blessings and trapped its incorporeal essence therein…”

“Not the only way, no.” As the dressing on her wound was completed, she stood and tested her weight on the leg, wincing slightly as she did so.

“Well, no, you could have physically ablated its physical form using brute force but generally such creatures are immune to most forms of weapon. Many can only be harmed by a blessed weapon or something composed of an alloy with a significant quantity of silver.”

“Hmmmmm, yes….” She held the sword up, letting the light fall on its shiny surface and reflecting on her face. “Silver alloys. I wonder where someone with my wealth could get hold of something like that?”

And… YOU, Yes, you over there, the writer who is reading this. If you want to do the next big thing challenge, feel free to consider yourself tagged by me, just make sure you link back to me when you do…

As you can see, I am not on the short list. Not an unexpected result as there were a lot of high quality writers entering this. So, not too disappointed about the result and, in actual fact, there is a beneficial side effect from failing to get a place in the contest. I have another use for the story I submitted – a story about an old woman with a magical dagger called The Final Sacrifice.

A few months ago, I was asked to follow up Gods of the Sea*. I agreed to do a novella and a series of shorts to make up a short novel length anthology. I’ve been working on that ever since, whenever I get the time to write. When I was considering what stories I had already written which had yet to be published could be included in this anthology, The Final Sacrifice stood out as one which could definitely fit the brief. I am therefore actually quite pleased that there are now 4000 words I do not have to fill with another story as yet unwritten…

So, my writing plans over the next few months involve plugging away at this new anthology. Currently about half way through…

In the meantime, while you are waiting for me to actually get round to finishing this anthology, you can still enjoy my paranormal romance Transitions… It has Romans in it. And Goths. But not the Barbarian tribe… You can also still get a free copy of The Curse. It has Witches in it. Well, mad prophetic dreams…

I got a scary e-mail in my inbox this morning. Good mail with an intriguing possibility but scary nontheless…

The publisher of Pirates and Swashbucklers wants to do a sequel, another collection of pirate themed short stories. All the authors of the previous volume are being invited to submit proposals for stories they want to write for it. Sequels to the stories in the first volume are welcomed, as are new ideas.

Of course, my brain was immediately clamouring for my attention with several hundred ideas for what I could write for this. Some of them better than others. Some of them downright dire and some possibly a little too close to plagiarism to be comfortable (a version of the Usual Suspects set in a pirate milieu, for example…). The problem is: how can you decide which one? And how can you tell if what you are about to write is going to be great?

I suppose everyone has sequel fear. How can you follow that which has gone before? if you feel like commenting, why not talk about your favourite sequel or how you managed to overcome sequel fear…

As for me, I need to get back to deciding which of the hundreds of ideas I have floating around my head…

It occured to me recently that it has been six months since I first started this blog with the post New Beginnings. Actually, it was six months ago on the 18th of March so it is actually six months and, er, some weeks exactly. However, I got so distracted with Vampire month that it slipped my mind.

So, how have things been going since this blog began? Quite well in my opinion, though still plenty of room for growth. The recent Vampire month guest posts have done very well with Ninfa Hayes so far racking up the highest number of post views with her post Giving Birth to my Muse and all the other participants gaining respectable numbers of readers too. Posts I have made myself have also done reasonably well, with my post for the AW Blog Chain, Rainy Days, racking up the second most views of any post. Which is amazing since that was a random piece of nonsense I babbled out following a prompt and based on some stuff I came up with while on holiday. All of this is reasonably promising after a mere six months of activity. I am getting hits from all over the world (at one point Australia was the place I was getting the most hits from, I blame Rebekah Harrington, but the UK soon took the lead with the US second and Australia third) including some far flung places such as the Phillipines, Peurto Rico and Mexico (actually quite a lot from Mexico, I have my suspicions).

My work on other blogs has also done rather well. I am now a regular reviewer on the ePublish a Book website and on Cult Britannia. I am also starting to post on the News from the Spirit World blog and my contributions there will get more common over the next few months. I am enjoying all of these, especially the opportunity to read self published books and see what is out there – both good and bad. I’ve posted on the Am Writing blog and also on the blogs of a few other writers (and am always willing to do a guest blog if anyone out there wants me to).

I’ve also ventured into writing a wargame called Realm for a company called Serious Lemon and this, along with the royalties from Pirates and Swashbucklers, constitute my first professional writing achievements. There are a few more irons in the fire so hopefully some more writing projects will start to come to fruition in the near future.

So, there you have it. In the next six months, I am hoping for the following:

– More people reading this blog

– More people commenting on this blog

– My ascenstion to ultimate god king of the universe and ruler of all I survey.

I’ve been looking through several reviews of the year from a number of people, mostly friends, and the overwhelming opinion seems to be that 2011 was a bad year for many. A lot of people seemed very happy to see it go, with a number of references to ‘staking it through the heart’ as though it were an evil vampire year that will never die.

I suppose many have good reason to dislike the past year. It seemed to be the year that the recession hit particularly hard in many industries – the public sector cuts hit hard and the retail sector is creating unemployment at a fantastic rate not to mention all the riots and protests that happened. So, there are arguments for it having been a bad year. However, I have seen people declare it a bad year when some really good things seem to have happened to them. Which leads me to wonder, has 2011 simply been the ‘glass half empty’ year? Have people been declaring it a bad year despite evidence to the contrary?

From my point of view, I prefer not to try to rate years in any generalised or specific manner. I don’t like to say it was good or bad, it just was. 2011 was no different. If I were to assess it any way, I would see it as a score draw. The number of good things that happened have been balanced by bad things.

In the past year I have:

– Made a mark on the publishing world. OK, the mark in question is like a very small scratch on a large thing made out of very smooth stone, but the mark is there nontheless. As a result of my two publications (one out, the other pending still) I have also gained more opportunities which have served to increase my exposure. I’ve done guest blogs, interviews and have started doing reviews on another site as well as a rather juicy work for hire job which should prove interesting once it makes it out into the world. In all, I consider this past year to have been a success in terms of publishing. A small success but one which is building. In comparison with other years, this is a massive improvement.

– Of course, I also started this blog which has been a strange experience. Previous blogs of mine have been more personal and intended for friends only whereas this one is intended for strangers. Sometimes the challenge in that is remembering that strangers are less interested in your day to day boring life than friends may be. Speaking which (and apologies for the next comments…)

– I moved house. This was a massive undertaking which took almost half a year to achieve (and most of the stress and work fell onto my wife…). We relocated from Birmingham to the outskirts of Manchester and have gained much in social life as a result. Therefore this also counts as a success, despite…

– Job situaiton. Moving house did not help my job situation. On the plus side, lots of time for writing. On the negative side, no money. While the start of 2011 had promise with a long term role in a college in Solihull and a chance to clear a lot of debt, the second half of the year has been less promising. Hoping for better job prospects in 2012.

So, as I say, overall a draw and a lot of promise for the future.

So, what is to come in the next year? Well, Transitions is due out as an ebook sometime in the first half of the year (each ebook in the Shades of Love series will come out once a month, starting from this month, until June when the collected anthology will be released in print). There is also the secret project I am working on at the moment which is due to be released soon after January 31st, assuming I can get everything done before the deadline. There is also a Mystery Antholgy I am contributing too which may come out sometime in 2012 (it is still being written). After these are out of the way, I really need to look into getting more writing out there in the big, wide old world. Several of my stories are currently doing the rounds of publishers and maybe one of them will be picked up soon…

In closing, I would therefore like to say Happy New Year to each and every one of you and hope for a 2012 which, if not better than 2011, at leasts seems to be in hindsight at the end of the year. Let us pledge on this day to make 2012 a glass half full year. In fact, sod it, let’s all complain to the management that the glass we want is a bigger glass and we damned well want it full or so help us we’ll protest or riot or throw a strop or something!

A January sale special from Pulp Empires sees reductions in some of their books, including Pirates and Swashbucklers.

Of course, I know that everyone who reads this blog went out and bought copies of this for all their friends and family for Christmas. However, in case you didn’t (or you really need another copy, say to hold up a wobbly table or for toilet paper or kindling) then you can get one from Createspace at a 25% discount. Simply use product code:62QUSQGC to get your discount…

Unfortunately, this code only applies to createspace so it is really only convenient to those of you who live in the US. If you order from out of the US, I think the postage costs eat up any discount. However, it may still be worthwhile.

So, on the AW forums there is a blog chain and the idea is that you get a slot in the month and, during that slot, you post about the topic given. So, it is now my turn and this month’s topic is ‘Home for the Holidays’. Given the season and the American nature of many of the members of AW, one of course must assume that the ‘Holiday’ referred to is ‘Christmas’.

This is a strange one for me because we generally don’t go ‘home’ for the Christmas. Home is where I live now and if I go anywhere for Christmas it is usually away from home. Ever since I got married and we acquired a dog, Christmas for us has been spent with my in laws in a hotel in the Lake District. This hotel, on the shores of Ullswater, a few miles from Penrith in the village of Glenridding, is a wonderful place to spend Christmas for a number of reasons:

1) The food. There is a lot of it. Many, many courses and not a sign of the endless piles of washing up that are the usual karmic reward for eating too much. The hotel used to do a seven course feast on Christmas day but they scaled it back to a mere five courses recently after too many guests exploded following the consumption of a final ‘wafer thin mint’. No, I am not exaggerating. Well, maybe a bit…

The hills are also wreathed in mist...

2) The isolation. Look up at the photograph on the top of this blog. I took that shot from the field at the back of the hotel. In any direction you look in from there, all you can see are hills and mountains. The photo to the left of this text shows more of them. In fact, the hills and mountains serve to block pretty much all mobile phone signals. Once you arrive there, you are cut off from the outside world very effectively. Well, unless you ask for a log in for the hotel’s free Wi Fi to get onto the internet… 🙂 If you want to be incommunicado, this is the place to be. In fact, I completed Gods of the Sea over last Christmas because it was easier to open a word file and do some typing than it was to log into the wi fi to check the internets. Productivity was improved! Also, it has been scientifically proven (by me, just now, I shall post the results of my extensive experiments in a paper I shall send to the Lancet) that bleak, isolated, pretty locations are not only restful but also pretty cool and very good for the brain.

3) Dog Friendliness. The hotel for us absolutely defines the gold standard of the concept of ‘dog friendliness’. Some hotels claim to aspire to this but they all fall short. This is a place where your dog can walk in, put his or her feet up on the reception counter, and be given a biscuit from the jar that is always behind the bar. When Santa Clause appears in the bar on Christmas morning to give all guests a present, there are presents for the dogs too. There are also lots of places to walk them and a lake to swim in. And yes, dogs do go swimming in the lake on Christmas day… Insane creatures that they are.

The water here is almost frozen...

4) The walking. You go to the lakes to go walking. With your dog if you have one. There are lots of places to explore in the local area, some of them more hardcore than others. One year we made the ill judged decision to take a seven mile hike around the lake on Boxing Day in some of the worst ice and snow seen for many years. It’s a route we’ve done before and found easy, even after 3 days of eating our entire body weight in food every day, but the solid ice made the gentle rolling hills far more treacherous. Especially when you have a sure footed canine on a lead trying to pull you into the valley because ‘there’s some interesting smells over there’. Crampons and ice picks may have helped. A sled, a few more dogs and some time to train them to all pull in the same direction would have been ideal. This year, we intend to pay more attention to the weather report before we leave.

5) Finally, apropos of the above, there is one thing that makes going to the Lake District a fun and interesting Christmas experience and that is the fact that it is more likely to:

There are other reasons, many of which would take too long to adequetly explain here. The upshot of it all is that, while I have in the past enjoyed Christmas at home (both at our home, my parents’ home or that of my in laws) the experience of spending a relaxing Christmas in a hotel where the people doing all the work are being paid to do it is one certainly worth doing at least once in your life.